There have been numerous techniques devised for enabling a teacher to more easily convey information and understanding to a class, and ultimately to relieve the teacher, to the greatest extent possible, of a number of the burdens associated with conveying that information to the class. Electronically-based classroom teaching systems have been used to implement some of such techniques.
One of the important services an electronically-based classroom teaching system can provide is to enable a teacher to monitor progress of the class and of individual students, and to focus effort in areas where students seem to have the most trouble understanding the concepts being taught.
One example of such a system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,086,381, which discloses an interactive learning system that has an interactive control unit that displays competition or quiz questions in multiple-choice or other format. Students using the system enter answer choices on a wireless keypad. A base station connected to the interactive control unit receives answer choices from and communicates with the wireless keypads. The interactive control unit keeps track of the scores for all users, and scores of different groups of users (i.e., classes). A receiver connected to the interactive control unit receives content for competitions by satellite broadcast. The competitions are then stored for later use. The system can conduct competitions from those that have been stored or broadcast, or from those that can be created by individual teachers. Previously broadcast and stored competitions can be played simultaneously by a plurality of remote locations, in a “live competition” setting.
An electronic classroom teaching aid also should assist a teacher in breaking through the reluctance that students have to asking questions in class. Some of this reluctance derives from basic shyness, or fear of seeming different, or fear of seeming more or less intelligent. Enabling students to ask questions individually about the material presented and confidentially by electronic means presented by the teacher can help to break through some of the shyness or reluctance a student otherwise may exhibit.
In larger classes, it may also allow teachers to gather and address questions that might otherwise go unanswered. For example, it may often be convenient for students to enter questions they have to be put in a queue to be answered by the teacher. One problem with this method, however, involves the current cumbersome methods for students to enter questions in networked, handheld devices in an efficient manner. For example, it is difficult to type questions or enter them using a stylus, because using a keyboard or stylus to enter questions is slow, prone to error, and distracting. This may limit the ability of the networked, handheld devices to improve the learning environment.
There is therefore a need for an improved technique for entering questions about presented material using networked, handheld devices in an efficient manner.